Always
by LouisexAmsel
Summary: The agonising thoughts of a man that had always said that always didn't exist, but came to the realisation that a love like the one that he felt was always. There really was a forever and she was it. She was his always.


His hands clenched the crumpled up piece of parchment tightly, the almost rice paper thin parchment threatening to tear in his hands but still he held on tightly. 'Love, Lily.' It was a sentiment that he wished that he had heard, that he wished that he had received from her. His heart ached at the thought of not receiving it. Having loved her for so long, having _always _loved her and never heard the words it made his heart ache. Contrary to what others believed, Severus did not have a heart that was as cold as stone, instead he merely had it locked away and saved for the one woman that he had always loved and knew that he would always love. There was something about her. It was just one of those things and he could not even think of her in any other way. Regardless of the time that had passed between them, the silence that had grown over the years since he had uttered the one word that had torn the two of them apart, there was simply no one else for him. The thought of it shattered him in two and Severus could not bear the thought of anyone else holding him. Clutching his hand and smiling at him. Whenever he saw a woman smile, regardless of who it was or even where he was, he always, _always _compared her to Lily. It was one of those things that he simply could not avoid.

Her green eyes constantly sparkled, even in old photographs he still felt as though she was right beside him, laughing at something that he had said even if it wasn't funny. She was always there. Always with him. That was how it was always supposed to be. Until he ruined it and it tore the two of them apart.

"_Always, Sev, I'll always be here."_ Lily had whispered the words to him late one night in the middle of their first year as they lay side by side next to the lake. Their fingers were barely touching but Severus felt warm with her by his side. She was his ever present light, his warmth that kept him going even on those long, lonely, cold, dark nights without her. _"I promise you will never be without me. Our friendship is forever."_ Nothing is forever he had told her, reminded her, but there was something about it that made him ache, something that was so eerily familiar that he wasn't even sure that he was right. Perhaps he had been wrong right from the start when he told her that nothing was forever, after all, his love for her was forever. Even after all this time. When there was no more good in his life and no more shining light, she was still his forever. _Always._

Lily Evans made him smile and the thought of her made it seem like she was still there, right beside him. Closing his eyes as he sank to the floor, his back leaning against the broken dresser drawer, Severus could almost feel her presence as though she were right there beside him. If he took a moment, because a moment was all it would take, he could have sworn that he could still smell the crisp apple scent of her perfumed shampoo mixed with the violets and roses that she often smelled of. Lily smelled of sunshine to Severus, the sunshine after the rain with the concrete was beginning to dry up ever so slowly. It was almost like one could see the steam as it rose from the concrete and watched as it faded from a dark gray almost black to a lighter shade of gray that almost seemed white. Dark to the light. Light to the dark. She was the light and he was the dark. And he didn't mean to be the dark, deep down he wanted to be good. Wanted to be there for her, to tell her that she meant absolutely everything to him. That she would always mean everything to him, but eventually even his deeply buried love for her hadn't been enough to save him from succumbing to the dark. It was a regret that he lived with every day, a feeling that he sensed would never go away.

If he was being completely and truly honest with himself, Severus would have said that he had known from the beginning that his love for Lily wouldn't be enough, because she deserved someone as good as she was. She did not need someone who's heart was as dark as his. Who had as many secrets to bury as he did. She did not need to burden of his past, the pain inflicted by his muggle father—even though she had a muggle father too—it wasn't the same. Nothing was the same. He wasn't as pure as he made out to be, no one ever was but Lily. She was pure. Delicate like a flower and as pure as any of the filthy blooded pureblood families but she would never be looked as that way. They would never see her as pure, all they saw was her dirty blood and turned their noses up at her. One day. One day Severus had vowed to himself that he would make them see that she was better than any of them, that she was proud of who she was and where she had come from. It was not where someone came from that made them who they are after all, it is what they choose to do with it and how they come into being. For Severus all he wanted was a better life. Lily gave him hope and happiness—something that he wasn't sure he ever had before—and that still was not enough. Maybe now it would be different. Maybe now everything would be different. It would be worse. It would hurt. Everything would hurt. He was already hurting more than he thought possible and he could not stand the thought of hurting as much as he was.

_Love, Lily._ It was those two words that tore him in two and made him wish that he had died instead of her. She would never have known how good he could be, how good he promised to be. He would have promised to be as good as anyone else and shine as brightly as anyone else. He would have sold his soul for just a shred of her light—and he had. By becoming a double agent, gambling with his life in such a way that no one but Dumbledore had ever known, he had taken on a shred of her light in a way that he felt would never happen again. It was how it was supposed to be. Deep down, Severus was sure of it. No one knew just what he was, he made him swear and it was all for the sake of Lily. To protect her son—even if it was to the arrogant toe-rag Potter and not him—he had made a promise to protect him for Lily's sake. Everything he did was for Lily's sake and no one elses. She would have been proud. Except even that was something that he now doubted. Would she have been proud to know the reason behind his goodness? Would she have been proud to know that he was doing it for her even though she had never loved him like he had loved her? It was something that he did not want to know the answer to.

_Love, Lily._ He ached for those words as his quivering fingertips traced the letters. He did not want to be here anymore, but he simply could not move. Could not take one step forward or backwards he had fallen to the depths of hell when she had been callously murdered. All because she refused to step aside and let the Dark Lord kill her precious son. It was the love of a mother and her child that he had no understanding of. His own mother had never been the same way. He could not understand whether or not it was real, or just a fallacy. He had heard about it and read about it in several books—most of them read to him by Lily in their earlier years at Hogwarts—but it was not the same as knowing that Lily had made the ultimate sacrifice for the one true love of her life. And it wasn't him. It wasn't even Potter. It was her son. To know that Lily had made the ultimate sacrifice for her son made it easier for him to understand but the pain would not go away. She could have lived. Should have lived. She did not have to die, did not even have to be there that night, but she was. She was always there. And he wanted to go back in time and save her. Somehow. Surely there was a way. Surely, there was something that he could do that would make it better. There was nothing. Only pain and love. And all of the love in the world made everything easier for him to understand.

"_Severus, you have to go now. You cannot stay here, cannot wait."_ He could see her, hear her whispered words as he lowered his head into his lap and sobbed unashamedly for the love of his life.

"But I need you…" He whispered. Tears trickled from the corners of his crinkled black eyes and Severus knew that no matter what the future held, without Lily, there was nothing. No hope. No love. No joy. No light. There was nothing. Only darkness and pain. Only sadness and a life without Lily. Beautiful Lily.

"_You don't need me, Sev, you only need yourself. You have that strength inside of you. I'm always here, always with you."_ It still hurt to remember the words that she had said so very long ago in whispers. All those nights that they had lain side by side next to the lake and told each other secrets, but he had never confided in her with the way that he felt. He could not bring himself to show her how much he truly cared. It was his own secret, his own way of saying that no matter how much he loved her, he could not let her see it for he was desperately afraid of letting her see how awful his life had truly been. How miserable his life was. He kept it a secret even from the woman that he loved. The girl that he loved.

Shivering with cold Severus could not even lift his head to the gentle pitter patter of rain as it knocked against the windows of the house in Grimmauld Place. It was not a home, merely a house and he did not envy Sirius for being forced to stay here, cooped up, nor would he have willing admitted that to him or anyone else for that matter. Not even Lily. Perhaps though, this is where he deserved to live, because for Severus, there was hope. No light. There was only what he had chosen to live with and that was the dark. There was nothing else and no point even trying, there would never be another Lily. There was only one and she was no longer. The mere thought of it brought another wretched sob to his wrecked body and Severus ached at the thought. His stomach ached, he felt as though one more tear would kill him. Just one more tear. There was no way in Merlin's name that he was going to give in. All he was doing was hurting himself and there was no chance of that stopping any time soon. For Severus, it was simply too much to handle.

"Make it stop." He murmured to himself, his voice broken and aching as though someone had stabbed a dagger through his larynx and left it there to make him bleed. "Please make it stop."

The pain of it would not cease and it only seemed to grow stronger and stronger as each day passed. Perhaps things would change. Perhaps, just perhaps one day he would get over it and the pain would dull—but he doubted it. There was never a day that went by when he didn't miss Lily. When he didn't think of her and the good times that the two of them had spent together. He wanted to be with her. Wanted to spend as much time with her as possible, but there was no time that he could spend with her. There was nothing that the two of them could do anymore. Except dream. Dream that one day, when he died he would join her in the afterlife or wherever the hell she was. He knew that he would not become a ghost for he was not afraid of death. He welcomed it for the comforting arms of darkness and the never again called to him. One day soon he would be there, and maybe, just maybe he would be with Lily again. Maybe. If she wanted to be with him. If she had forgiven him when he had not forgiven himself for ruining what they had—what they _might _have had had he not been so humiliated by those that she called 'friends'. Except she had stood up for him but the humiliation was too much for him to bear and it cut him to the core.

From that moment on she had refused to speak to him. Ignored his every owl and pleading apology. Ignored the roses and chocolates that he had sent her for her birthday because he wanted to do something decent to prove that he had some good in him. That he could change, but there was no good. There was only him. Him and his love for her that made him ache more and more each time. There was nothing else. Every moment he passed her at school and she looked the other way he could feel a bit of his heart breaking each time. More and more it broke and made him feel like he was falling apart. He was falling apart. The seams that held him together were fraying and falling apart and taking him with them. It was too much to bear, but there was no other way. There was nothing left so he welcomed the destruction. Welcomed the pain of shattering the soul that she had brought to life. The heart that she had made leap with joy at every touch. She had made him want to be a better person, but at the end of the day, sometimes it just was not good enough. Sometimes it just needed to be done differently. Sometimes not even love is enough to keep the darkness from invading and swallowing him whole. There was only love there, nothing more and now that that was gone, Severus felt more alone than ever.

Pulling himself together as much as possible, Severus climbed to his feet, his hands still clutching the fragile piece of parchment. _Love, Lily._ He wanted to keep it forever, keep it close to him and pretend that she had written it for him, pretend that there was nothing and no one else that could take that away from him, but Severus knew better. He knew that it could not be done. Each of them was completely different and it was how they chose to portray themselves that made them that way. She would never have loved him the same way that she loved her son, would never have died for him like that, but Severus did not want that. He just wanted to be good enough for her to love any way that she could. Any way that she wanted to. He loved her with a love that was unconditional. Eternal. For the man that said that there was no such thing as forever, that it did not exist even he knew that he had always been wrong, because there was a forever. There was an always. That always was Lily and she would always be his. In his heart just as he would always be hers.

"_Always."_ He whispered into the darkness, closing his eyes as he clutched the tattered parchment close to his chest.


End file.
